Re: [webmin-devel] Webmin feature enhancement idea to recover from mistakes

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

Andrew Kornak wrote:
> I recently had the misfortune of making a mistake in my network settings
> which in turn had the effect of disconnecting me from my server which is
> at a remote location. Eventually someone was able to manually come in
> and correct my mistake, but, it occurred to me that a possible soution to
> this kind of problem would be to have a mechanism by which changes
> are not permanent unless they are confirmed through a transparent
> webmin confirmation process. By this I mean, when a change is made
> it would revert to a previous setting unless one where to confirm by
> logging in again or by clicking a confirm setting when you login again.
> So, say I make a drastic mistake in my network configuration. The setting
> is made, the network restarts, I lose the connection! Ofcourse, if I have
> no connection, I cannot confirm, thus my ass is saved!! Hurray!! The
> confirmation might be an interval set by the user. It could be a 10 minute
> default
> or something. I know that webmin has a caching mechanism built in,
> perhaps this would be something like that where it would be used to
> recover from a mistake? Perhaps this would be useful in other modules
> as well. Perhaps you might lose you web server or database or something.
> I don't know, would this be feasible? I can't be the only one that makes
> this
> kind of mistake. Since this interface is so dependent on a functioning
> network, perhaps it would be useful? It could also be an optional feature
> only. A feature that might save someone from losing their job! Just a
> thought.

Perhaps what is needed is a feature in the Network Configuration 
module for testing connectivity after changes are applied, and rolling 
  the changes back if the network appears to be down. The test could 
be performed by pinging some external host, defined in the module's 
configuration .. and the rollback done by saving the state of all 
interfaces and routes before applying changes, and restoring them if 
something went wrong.

Implementing it could be a little tricky, but it is worth doing (since 
I've had the same problems myself!), so I will see about adding it to 
a future release.

  - Jamie